


Managing

by theshippershavethebox



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshippershavethebox/pseuds/theshippershavethebox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Songfic for Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Managing

**Author's Note:**

> Silly little songfic that I wrote for thechriscolferfangirl as a Christmas present. Most of the inspiration was drawn from alifegoeshere's video, "The Call - Sherlock / Johnlock". 
> 
> Song is "The Call" by Regina Spektor.
> 
> I made it Teen and Up because there's a really small amount of swearing and an allusion to violence. I don't really know, I'm not very good at this whole tagging thing just yet.

It started out as a feeling

_The man seemed to be barely human, all lanky legs and too-high cheekbones, eyes that appeared to be a different colour every time John looked at him. Around others, he sucked up the attention in the room, basked in it, purring like a self-satisfied cat. When they were at home, however, Sherlock channeled a bit of that bright attention at him, his eyes calculating. When they were at home, John felt like the most important person in the room._

Which then grew into a hope 

_After Baskerville, dinners at Angelo’s became more frequent, along with movie nights, and the appearance of milk in the fridge. There were shared smiles, exasperated chuckles, exuberant post-case laughter, and replays in his head of a deep voice calling after him, “You are amazing, you are fantastic!” Parroted words, appreciation reflected back at him in the only way the oddity of a man understood._

Which then turned into a quiet thought

_It was Sherlock that prompted it in the end, of course, while he chattered on incessantly in the cab about Mr. Wiggins, who apparently ranked in a 2.5 on the Kinsey scale. When they’d returned home, he had immediately fell onto the couch, muttering something about sticky shoes and leftover post it notes, leaving John to his research with pursed lips and furtively curious glances at the mop-headed detective as he snuffled and snored, the way his ridiculous legs hung off the couch suddenly becoming endearing rather than laughable._

Which then turned into a quiet word

_Texting Harry, of all people, became a daily activity. Not while Sherlock was in the room, of course, but early in the morning – which had its perks, of course, seeing as she hadn’t usually managed to get herself hammered so quickly after waking up, if it was a good day and she wasn’t still riding on last night’s dregs of piss-poor vodka._

_Sent; I think I love him, H_

_Received; that’s cuz ur a bloody idiot, johnny_

And then that word grew louder and louder 

_He shot someone, again. A crime lord, for goodness sake, he’s killed for worse before – but the man had been advancing on Sherlock, surely, steadily, hate in his eyes. The trigger had been pulled without a second thought._

_It’s mad, twisted, and insane, but it’s_

_Sherlock fell asleep with his head on John’s shoulder on the way home, well-fed from their trip to the Thai place down the road, having stuffed his face after a week-long stint of not sleeping._

_It’s soft, sweet, and something he’s never experienced with Sherlock before, but it’s_

_There were beakers littered about on the couch, something bright green dripping from one of them, making a tendril of smoke curl up from the material of the couch. John yelled himself hoarse, again._

_It’s exasperated, irritated, and forgiving, but it’s_

_love._

Till it was a battle cry 

_It’s love that thrums through him as they run through the streets of London, overlaid with the adrenaline and the ecstatic high he achieved from the brush of a gloved hand, or a smile shot at him in the middle of a dark alleyway. He would tell Sherlock eventually, of course, if he didn’t figure it out first. For the time being, he was utterly content to wait, to bask in the light for just a little bit longer before facing rejection._

_Rejection, he felt, would be far more utterly debilitating coming from his mad scientist, his consulting detective, his best friend._

_He wonders when he started referring to Sherlock in the possessive form._

_He wonders why he didn’t tell Sherlock before it happened._

_He wonders._

\-------------------- 

I'll come back 

_John will manage. John always manages, with his girlfriends, and the surgery, and the milk in the fridge. John manages everything._

_He had once managed Sherlock._

When you call me

_Mycroft doesn’t give up, sending round his well-dressed men, his government-issued toy soldiers. CCTV pictures, grainy and enclosed in official folders, delivered to the door of whatever hovel he’s staying in. They show a closely trimmed head of hair, military-straight shoulders, and a good old English stiff upper lip._

_Sherlock crumples them, then smoothes them out, then burns them._

No need to say goodbye 

_He’ll return. He shall return, and John will accept him back, and everything will be all right. There hadn’t been any need to warn him, he would understand._

\-------------------- 

Just because everything's changing 

_Greg handles John like a fucking china doll, offering him cuppa after cuppa, letting him peek over his shoulder at their latest case files, all very hush-hush after the so-called scandal, of course._

_He’s never any help – he feels more like a mascot, taken on out of pure pity. He stops visiting after a week._

Doesn't mean it's never been this way before

_Grey. There’s quite a lot of grey in his life now - cups of Earl Grey brought by Mrs. Hudson, white shirts gone grey in the wash because he’d absentmindedly chucked them in with the dark load again, the grey frames of his reading glasses, and the new grey streaks he keeps finding in his hair. He deals with it, in the same way he had dealt with the bedsit. Wake up; drink the tea, travel to work, lunch, home, tea, and go to sleep to start the pattern over again. It’s blissfully mindless and peaceful (or so he tells himself, repeatedly)._

_Sometimes, it feels like the months with his detective had been a dream._

All you can do is try to know who your friends are

_Mike stops by, every now and again. He’s always so nervous, dancing around the topic of death, skipping over Sherlock, prancing about like a monkey who’s been trained to be his friend. John shouldn’t feel irritated with him, and yet he does sometimes – how could anyone possibly understand, anyway?_

_It takes three months for him to realize that he is alone without Sherlock. Best friend? Try only friend, instead. Try ‘too hopelessly in love in my idiotic flatmate to go out with a few mates every once in a while’. They had been mad, they had been sparkling, they had been ridiculously wonderful. They had been the champions of the London skyline at midnight, the both of them living off of late-night takeaway and the other’s laughter._

_They had been inseparable and ineffable – and John was the one left marching on, marching steadily in place. Sometimes, he hated him for it._

As you head off to the war 

_London had been their battleground. It remained so, for John, but morphed into something all too recognisable. His battle was to find a new reason to continue on, and to regain his balance after having the rug pulled out from under him so cruelly by Sherlock and his lies._

_That was what Ella had said, anyway._

_His real battle was ignoring Ella Thompson so that he could continue on in his grey world._

Pick a star on the dark horizon 

_He began to type up the cases, the ones he’d missed, saving them in an unpublished section of his blog. He drew his information from case notes Sherlock has left behind in the boxes that littered a corner of his room. The man’s handwriting was – had been – disgraceful, sprawling across the pages, often clumping up into the margins when he’d run out of room for his thin, spidery script. He wrote down the minutiae, as always, the things that no one noticed, yet seemed so obvious when he had spelled them out, drawling in that tone that made everyone else present shrink into nothing, the bastard._

_Despite the fact John knew what his methods, he still found himself smiling as he jotted things down in his notebook, with a small shake of his head and a pleased huff of breath that came out sounding something rather similar to a whispered “fantastic”._

_ Twine on top of fridge frayed and wiry left there 2 days ago affair with gardener call lestrade later_

_ Dropped off early Christmas gift poisoned because her sister hasn’t called yet ask ms. Hudson about biscuit tins she’ll know_

_ Flatmate killed w/ garden hose [ mention flatmates to Stanford later ]_

And follow the light 

_He dives into his project, unearthing new boxes and journals overflowing with case notes. Ella says it’s unhealthy to devote so much of his time to something that has been lost._

_He stops seeing her._

\-------------------- 

You'll come back 

_He’s gaunt, staying in ghastly hovels, sleeping when he can. Sometimes, he can almost feel John tutting at him, can almost see him sitting across from him at the filth encrusted table, looking pointedly at the sparse plate of food he always manages to scrounge up._

When it's over 

_Then again, he can feel him when he’s working as well, a phantom hand on his shoulder as he aims the gun, John standing stonily in a military stance beside him as he plunges the knife into the man’s chest, over and over. John would say it was okay. Not exactly a bit good, but the man had been a bad man. John would have approved, would have been fine with watching Sherlock slowly transform._

No need to say good bye 

_Mycroft stops sending photographs – something about ‘compromised security’. Sherlock spares the ashes in the corner a single glance before leaving the motel._

You'll come back 

_He wakes up crying, some nights. He’s bewildered, at first, wiping them away with the corner of a raggedy blanket, lying in silence until he manages to drop back under again, falling into a restless doze._

When it's over

 _It’s a few weeks until he finds himself crying when he’s awake, as well. A foolish waste of his time, naturally, but he can’t seem to stop, the sobs racking his too-thin chest. He leaves the latest motel with his shoulders taller than usual, the wind whistling around his ears in an unfamiliar fashion due to the new, close-cropped haircut, crudely dyed blonde. His coat had been beyond repair, riddled with holes that he didn’t want to think about, full of slashes from rusty knife fights, and so he'd left it behind, heaped in a corner. He rolls his shoulders, a hollow smile appearing on his face as his shoulder twinges with pain._

_They match, now._

No need to say good bye 

_It takes three years. A full three years of running, killing, hating. Climbing the stairs of 221B takes more effort than anything he’d ever done._

\-------------------- 

Now we're back to the beginning 

_John doesn’t speak to him when he comes through the door, haggard and blonde and all wrong. He opens his mouth, as if to speak, then shakes his head, leaving the room with a noticeable limp, up the stairs to his bedroom (the door slams, Sherlock winces)._

_Later, Sherlock learns that Mycroft had told him, showing up in one of his infuriating black cars, the ones that travelled across London like dark, indestructible beetles. He’d always been a nosy prat._

_A month later, they’re on speaking terms again, John having screamed himself hoarse within the first week. He’s gruff, and sometimes distant, but he leaves a cup of tea on the counter every morning before leaving for the surgery. It’s a few days after that when Sherlock sees him smile again, a whisper of his former grin, but there, growing a little more with every deduction. John continues to watch him long after they’ve both run off the crime scene, his eyes beginning to soften with something familiar._

It's just a feeling and no one knows yet 

_Sherlock runs a hair through his bottle-black hair when they arrive at the Yard, giving John a look that could almost be described as uneasy. John just raises an eyebrow, and smiles despite himself, opening the door and giving Sherlock a nod. The left corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitches upwards, and that old feeling crops up again, bubbling up as John watches him stride to the desk._

But just because they can't feel it too

_Lestrade’s furious, Donovan’s shocked, and Anderson just scoffs. Halfway through Lestrade’s rant, John’s hand finds its way to Sherlock’s knee, giving it a comforting squeeze, his eyes still firmly focused on Greg._

Doesn't mean that you have to forget 

_During the cab ride home, John catches Sherlock squinting at him, his attention once again entirely on John._

_John grins._

Let your memories grow stronger and stronger

_Just like that, it’s back. Not like the beginning, of course, nothing can be like the beginning._

Till they're before your eyes 

_But John’s got a cracked, healing sort of happy._

\-------------------- 

You'll come back

_It’s a rainy day in London (not particularly special or exciting, obviously)._

When they call you 

_Sherlock closes the distance between them, his bluegreengreyspeckledwithgoldwhoknows eyes widening just a fraction, bordering on uncertainty._

No need to say good bye 

_John smiles as he leans in._


End file.
